Month: August 2024

Introduction

I live in the Blue Mountains, about 100 kms west of Sydney. It is a beautiful region loved by Sydneysiders as a destination for day outings. I have mixed feelings about this – as any anybody living in an attractive destination knows. We can be overrun by visitors on weekends and holidays. In 2020 and into 2021 COVID brought residents a period of blessed respite. We had the place to ourselves – and that was wonderful. That said I do believe that people with disability are equally entitled to be a nuisance.

The Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) has an impressive commitment to inclusion and accessibility. In June this year (2024) it launched its Blue Mountains Mobility Map. As a member of the council’s Access Advisory Committee, I was able to contribute some thoughts to the map’s development.

I was particularly impressed that the council committed itself to developing the map with limited funds and produced a useful web-based tool that could be accessed on mobile phones (as well as tablets and computers). This was an innovation that had potential to be replicated across the state, across the nation and beyond.

What does the map do?

The map covers the BMCC local government area, principally localities along the Great Western Highway. The map gives the opportunity to identify accessible playgrounds, toilets, parking, walking tracks and lookout as well as other facilities and services. It means that people like me with mobility disabilities can plan a visit to the region and not have to guess whether a potential destination is accessible.

You can explore the map here.

The value of the map to a person with mobility challenges

I don’t travel as much as I used to. Places and travel routes are not as accessible as I need. So, when I do go anywhere I have to plan carefully. Travelling itself is bad enough for me. It can be draining physically and emotionally. It is hence deeply disappointing to arrive and have no idea where is accessible, inclusive and safe. The opportunity to consult a map that guides me on what and where is accessible would be a huge advantage. 

My personal reaction to this Mobility Map is that it must become a universal tool to which other critical information can be added. My major travel gripe is the way motels misrepresent that they have ‘accessible’ rooms. Last year I travelled east to the coast and booked into a motel I was assured was accessible. It was true there was a handrail into the shower and steady grips in the shower cubicle. But I am 186 cms tall and I had to bend over a lot to grip the handrail, rendering it useless. It was way too low. The toilet had a grip mounted on the wall, but it was too low and too close to be on any use to me.

I have previously approached the NSW government recommending that it set standards concerning claims about accessibility made by motels. I mostly travel solo, so I don’t have a companion who can look out for my safety. In the last 5 years I have found only one motel with a genuinely accessible room – The Shearing Shed in Dubbo. I was told I was lucky to have gotten the room, given the demand for it.

My vision is a statewide mobility map that also provides real information about a whole range of accessibility concerns,  including accessible accommodation – something the BMCC map does not yet cover.

The potential of a mobility map

Aside from my issues about accessible accommodation there are questions about whether a variety of facilities and services are accessible. This includes cafes, restaurants, and shops as well as other businesses.

I use Google maps a lot and I am sometimes irritated by the number of businesses whose information clutters my screen. But that tells me there is a possibility of enticing accessible businesses to make their presence known on a mobility map. 

I think the map is a wonderful idea whose potential begs to be developed. I understand that in realising this potential money and management beyond a local council’s scope. But at a regional or state level realising that potential is eminently doable.

The ideal would be to develop the mobility map as an app for mobile devices as well as computers.

Conclusion

I contracted GBS in 2008 and acquired permanent mobility and grip disabilities. In 2009 I bought my first iPhone and discovered how mobile technology could enhance my lived experience of disability.

My first response to the BMCC’s mobility map wasn’t that it would make my life in this community any better. I have lived here 22 years. My immediate reaction was to imagine how good it would be to have such a map available when I visit places I don’t know. At the moment, a visit to an unfamiliar destination requires a lot of net-based preparation. This is especially the case when it comes to identifying accessible toilets, parking, recreation areas and accommodation.

The BMCC has opened up an extraordinary potential that all people who need to know how accessible a community or destination is can benefit from. The mobility map should have ongoing refinement, of course.

Check the map out. Urge your local government to create something similar. Better still urge it to create a coalition of local governments who can share costs or access funding.

Introduction

I was recently alerted to a promo for training for ERGs and this set me to wondering what I now think of the idea. After all my operation as an ERG lead was transformed after one keynote conference speech and participation in a day long workshop on Networkology.

So much depends on the nature of the training and the skill/experience level of those participating. In an ideal world there would be a perfect match of training content and format with need. In the real world that match is mostly down to good fortune and destiny. I didn’t go to the 2018 AND Annual National Conference intending to get a transformational education. I may have been the only ERG lead at this event at the right stage of my development to extract maximum benefit from the experience.

For the past 14 months I have been providing periodic mentoring support to a handful of ERGs leads. This experience has been an opportunity for me to rethink, and sometimes re-imagine, how ERGs might be supported. I currently have a bias toward longer term mentoring over short-term training. But I can see that either option may serve particular needs.

Below I want to reflect on a few ideas about training and mentoring for ERGs.

Is training always a good idea?

It isn’t. It’s often a waste of time. This is for 2 key reasons:

1. It often provides an intense burst of information which overloads our cognitive capacity and doesn’t build long term capability.
2. There is rarely any follow up.

I am not a fan of training as a concept. I prefer education. Training has its place in many contexts, but not in all. You can be trained in a particular skill, but you must be educated to acquire a skill set. Training tends to be seen as a time-limited exercise in learning a skill or a discrete set of information delivered in isolation. Education implies skill development plus the acquisition of knowledge developed over time and in some cultural context.

True, there are training courses that extend beyond one session and may have multiple sessions over weeks or months. Here I am not trying to create a clear or definite distinction between training and education. Rather stimulate awareness of the spectrum of ways we can learn.

There’s a huge difference between acquiring knowledge and skills and applying them. When it comes to running an ERG well so much depends on what skills, experience and knowledge you bring to the role – and hence what your need developmental needs are.

In short, if your developmental needs match the content of a training course, take the course. But how do you know whether you have assessed your developmental needs accurately?

What is involved in running an ERG well?

When I first encountered Kate Nash’s idea of Networkology I had an idea of what management and leadership were as defined skill sets – based on years of reading and research. That was in 2018. Since then, I have come to better appreciate that these skills are built on academic disciplines and a scientific approach (psychology and neuroscience).

Not all ERG leads come with a solid background/education in management and leadership. Neither do they come with experience in navigating organisational politics or have reputational standing with the organisation’s executive leadership.

Some organisations grant their ERGs high status. Others do little more than sanction an ERG’s establishment and grant modest support. ERG leads can be selected by competitive recruitment or election by ERG members.

Some ERGs are seen as an accountable business unit and others are led by volunteers with an ill-defined function.

A minimal requirement for a successful ERG is skilled leadership operating a body recognised as being integrated into the organisation’s inclusion policies and accountable to members (meeting needs and delivering outcomes) and the organisation’s executive leadership (value for money and contribution to inclusion objectives). 

But who might know this? Who might agree that this, or an alternative, formula is what should be applied?

Whole organisation training/education

If there is only a focus on developing the skills of ERG leaders there is a risk that, unless the ERG leads are very carefully selected, the skill deficit might be significant and beyond the realistic capacity of any training program.

The critical foundational requirement for any ERG is that there is a clear understanding of, and commitment to, the ERG coming from the organisation’s executive leadership, and ERG sponsors and champions. These people, plus the ERG leads, should participate in a shared experience of mutual discovery, trust building and expectation clarification.

The challenge of running an ERG well isn’t just down to ERG leaders. The welfare of staff is an organisational responsibility, and an ERG is just one manifestation of that responsibility playing out. But an organisation is a community, not an assembly of unrelated parts. The ERG and the organisation’s  leadership are interdependent.

We must think in terms of shared responsibility and collaboration, and not in terms of heroic struggle against uncaring or oppressive forces. Yes, elements of an organisation can most certainly be uncaring and oppressive, but countering them is a shared responsibility.

I have argued elsewhere that inclusive organisations reflect our cultural evolution toward embracing diversity (despite the periodic hiccups). This means that for most organisations their DEI policies and practices are exploratory and experimental. Nobody is expert in making inclusion happen. It is novel and all practitioners are ‘building their airplane while flying it’.

Hence to imagine that ERGs alone need training and developing misses the scope of the challenge and unreasonably places the burden of responsibility upon an ERG. Let’s take a moment to tease out who needs to evolve their thinking and practice:

• An organisation’s senior executive leadership – so it can provide guidance to the organisation on what permissions to give, what resources to allocate, and what expectations to sanction.
• Executive sponsors and champions – who can support ERG leads through coaching and mentoring and develop relationships with ERG leads so they feel confident about putting their reputations on the line to promote the ERG’s cause.
• ERG leaders – their role is complex. In some organisations it is a ‘wildcard’ role that sits outside normal ideas of hierarchy and acknowledged lines of authority. This is especially so if the ERG lead does not have a leadership background or status. The risk of electing ERG leaders is that they may have potential but not experience and so require well thought-through support.

This is the critical triad. When it works well the potential of an ERG is unleashed. This was my experience as an ERG lead. But that was not by design, rather fortune smiling. In my consultancy I have had to ask how to convert good fortune into effective intentional action.

An ideal training model

I think all elements of the critical triad must participate in developmental experiences which reflect the reality that this is all a novel evolutionary situation, and all parties must acquire new insights. But the novelty must be admitted to, as must be the need to learn how to get maximum benefit from setting up an ERG.

I will suggest a few ideas that should be part of a shared learning action:

• The development of an appreciation of how the demand for equity and inclusion has evolved over the past near 70 years. The demand became a movement in the 1960s. It has taken this long to get where we are now. What does that tell us?
• Understand that this is an evolution, not a struggle of good against evil. Not everybody is quickly capable of expressing their innate sense of goodwill in a universal way. Many have cultural and personal disincentives to be inclusive, and these will not be overcome by rational appeals. Habits of thought and feeling are deeply ingrained at an individual psychological level. Change requires significant cognitive effort – so the reason to change must be compelling and aspirational. Action is more potent than argument.
• Managing the politics of changing behaviours requires understanding how persuasion is best engaged in. None of the members of the critical triad are immune from needing this knowledge. We can persuade people to comply but that does not mean that behaviour has changed to conform with new insights, only to appear to meet requirements. Deep learning and behavioural change come only from the authentic engagement of personal emotions. It is hard work, so there must be a compelling reason to undertake it – other than appearing to comply. We are all good at faking it.
• ERG leaders may not be seen as members of the elite leadership in-group if their status in the organisation does not warrant that assumption or extension of membership. That limits the perception of credibility and right of influence. If ERGs are assumed to have the same status as unions, rather than as partners in helping an organisation achieve its equity and inclusion goal, that can place a gulf between the ERG leader and other leaders. The potential for collaboration recedes into unconscious and unintended competition.

The value of mentoring

As an ongoing commitment, ERG leads should be mentored by Executive Sponsors and Executive Champions. This has two advantages. It creates development opportunities for ERG leads who have less developed skills and it ensures that the organisation has insight into the challenges faced by ERG leads. Mentoring primarily builds strength in mentees, but it also is a lens on problems that do require executive intervention or more extensive action. 

Mentoring also minimises the risk of failure. I have noted elsewhere that while organisations do not intentionally set up ERGs to fail, failure is more likely if there is no linkage between ERG leads and executive leadership. Mentoring can be a subtle form of supervision as well as guidance, reflecting an organisation’s concern that the ERG is on track in delivering agreed outcomes.

Mentoring must be predicated upon a sound foundation of understanding of an ERG’s agreed function and purpose – what its value proposition is, and what its standing is within the organisation. Such a foundation is built when the organisation’s Senior Executive Leadership, the ERG’s Executive Sponsor and Executive Champions, the ERG leads, and the DEI team undertake a shared ‘training’ session how to run and support an ERG. Such a session should be revisited periodically to ensure there is ongoing agreement on understandings, insights and commitments. 

Building this foundation is the most critical learning/development experience for all players. Other skill acquisition needs can be identified and addressed via mentoring and accessing other L&D sources. 

I am arguing that there should not be ERG-specific training for ERG leads beyond understanding how ERGs function. The Incredible Power of Staff Networks by Cherron Inko-Tariah was immensely helpful to me. I can definitely see benefit from training of this kind. The unique nature of ERGs must be understood.

ERGs must fit within an organisation’s DEI policy and practice commitments, so any other training and development must be mainstream.

Conclusion

ERGs will have developmental needs. But which of them cannot be satisfied through a program of mentoring and accessing existing L&D resources? In some cases, where ERG leads are elected, rather than selected, and there is no control over a requirement for prerequisite capabilities, a more intensive training need may be apparent. Here mentoring and coaching might have to be more frequent and more intensive.

My aversion to training, having undertaken a huge amount over my public sector career (spanning over 4 decades) is that its not very sticky. The ideal of Life-Long Learning was finally abandoned a few years back as a forlorn cause. You must be a motivated learner to extract maximum benefit from a brief training experience – and that’s not most of us. I have no memory of ever having a follow up or review of my any of training experiences. 

Learning comes from exposure, immersion, commitment and repetition (EICR). This, at least, is true of the things I have become very good at doing. A motivated learner will seek out opportunities for EICR, but unless an organisation is on the same page it is unlikely to provide such opportunities as a matter of course. Coaching and mentoring are still not routine supports offered within organisations to even highly motivated learners.

Its not usual for mangers and executives in general to appreciate the need for EICR, so we can’t assume that any learning experience is going to reinforced with effective follow up.

I think the idea that ERG leads need training in an isolated skill set is flawed – if it is seen as a panacea. Would ERG leads benefit from being supported to enhance their skills? Of course. But that applies to any leader.

What those needs might be will depend upon how the organisation, and the ERG leads understand the ERG’s nature and role. Is it a volunteer staff committee representing the interests of certain staff groups or is it a de facto business unit providing lived experience feedback on how certain policies or procedures are playing out?

It’s not sufficient to assume the spectrum of needs ERG leads may have. We must understand the role of an ERG and then ensure all the players have a shared need for mutual comprehension and trust which is then satisfied. We must keep in mind this is about collaboration in meeting a shared objective.

Introduction

Neuroscientists tell us that the pain of being excluded isn’t different from pain caused by a physical injury. Saying that exclusion ‘hurts us’ isn’t metaphorical. So why do humans cause pain to other humans without seeming to care? Any dive into our history will tell us it was ever thus. The question should be ‘why do humans cause pain to those they should care about and care for?’ 

The key word is ‘should’.  Our widely agreed principles that set the desired tone and character of our communities are aspirational. They are not mandatory. In fact, even ‘should’ is a disguised ’must’ and it is better we express our aspirations as a hope. So, we can reframe that sentence as:

The question should be ‘why do humans cause pain to those we hope they might care about and care for?’ 

While the social model of disability conveys a real need to ensure our communities and infrastructures are accessible and inclusive it is not the entire story. Disability can cause suffering in and of itself – and this often exacerbated by exclusion and inaccessibility. Responding to the social model of disability must be more than obedience to a social justice imperative. It must be a response to real suffering by real people.

It is generally understood that learning doesn’t effectively happen unless our emotions are aroused and engaged. We don’t change how we think or act unless we are motivated. We learn and grow best when our emotions are engaged, and we develop the desire to put in the cognitive effort to evolve how we think and behave.

We are more disposed to be empathic and compassionate when we comprehend that a person who we are aware of, or concerned about, is experiencing pain – physical or emotional. This is especially so if that pain is caused, or exacerbated, by something we have, or have not, done.

A complicating factor is that interpretations of neuroscientific research suggest that people in power positions are less empathic. Indeed, I have read that getting a power position can switch off empathy responses in a way similar to acquiring brain damage can. 

An inverse relationship between power and empathy seems natural and makes sense when you think about it. You don’t want generals overly empathic about their troops. They might decide that combat is a WHS hazard they can eliminate by not fighting – wait, maybe this isn’t as good an argument as I first thought. 

But it just isn’t helpful at all when leadership in improving inclusion and accessibility is expected from executives and managers. Contemporary ideas of leadership see it more as a personal attribute rather than just a positional responsibility. This suggests that leadership in improving inclusion and accessibility may best come from those who are inherently more empathic and compassionate – and this is a compelling argument for ERGs.

We here must also distinguish between power and influence. Power created by positional authority may trigger non-empathic behaviour, but influence created by effective leadership must be empathic. Our organisations are transitioning from reliance on positional or status-based power and authority to influential leadership. But such an evolution is naturally slow. ERGs must understand where they fit into this evolution and create their best opportunities to achieve their goals.

Activating our natural capacity for empathy and compassion

Our potential for empathy and compassion is strongest when we see people as belonging to our in-group. What that in-group is depends upon many things and can be at any scale – from humanity in general down to a select few intimates. We generally accept that the larger that group is the better – for obvious reasons. 

In practical terms the in-group is our wider community (subject to laws and policies at a national or state level), our local community (place-based), our specific cultural/interest community, our family, our friends, and our workplace community. This isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list.

Workplaces have subdivisions which may or may not have associated senses of in-groups – divisions, business areas, work teams, regional or local offices. In-groups can exist among staff at certain grades (executive, managers, non-managerial staff, professional or specialist groups).

Whatever the in-group whether it is empathic and compassionate depends on its culture – and that usually means its leadership. Toxic workplace cultures are not uncommon. It is often said that employees don’t quit organisations, they quit teams (or relevant work group).

There are two important considerations:

• In-groups created by executives and managers can risk keeping their potential for strong empathy and compassion within their own in-group boundaries and not express those qualities as a key aspect of their leadership functions (be reminded above – about how power can reduce empathy).
• Work teams subject to low skill and/or non-empathic management may experience suppression or control of local empathic and compassionate responses. Frustration of efforts to address the inclusion and accessibility needs of team members through a manager’s non-responsiveness or non-compliance with the organisation’s policies is commonly reported.

ERGs are potentially a potent tool for activating and focusing staff’s potential for empathy and compassion. A critical element in realising this potential is engaging with the organisation’s executive leadership to create a positive feedback loop. Sometimes the best initial response from executive leaders is the sanctioning of the establishment of an ERG. The executive can do more, of course – but this is the critical act because it unleashes huge potential – when we understand that it does.

The next phase is the unfolding of the ERG’s potential and its engagement with the executive leadership to complete the circuit through which the potential for empathy and compassion can be activated and generate change through the whole organisation. This requires an ERG to realise its potential as a leader in stimulating empathy and compassion.

Conclusion

What prompted this post was partly a call from a former colleague who told me of their return to work and the lack of empathy and understanding they encountered. It was also partly exploring a theme that arose from a story of poor planning and consultation in relation to several other staff with mobility disabilities.

All the people I spoke with were people for whom I have affection and respect. But then it also struck me that they all had another thing in common. Their disabilities caused them pain and distress regularly, and on bad days even more so. Situations leading to inaccessibility or reduced accessibility added further adversity that reflected in their struggles to work well and to enjoy a personal life that wasn’t dominated by the need to recover because of work-related situations caused by non-empathic decisions. There’s a whole separate story here that I will tackle soon.

Living with a disability that causes pain and psychological distress is bad enough. This reality isn’t spoken of because doing so can seem like complaining – and we mostly prefer people with disability to be heroic. I am writing this just before the 2024 Paralympics start. No medal winning hero is going to say how much pain they experience normally or in the pursuit of their dreams. We witness their passion for excellence with no understanding what must be ensured to achieve it. That’s fine when the pain is self-inflicted in pursuit of a personal goal that is beyond our normal scope of attainment. That’s something many of us know – but not a majority.

Workplaces are meant to be safe and inclusive. Going to work may carry a price of pain and stress because of one’s disability but WHS obligations also require an organisation to minimise hazards at work – physical and psychological. There is a vital distinction between self-inflicted pain and that inflicted or caused by others.

However, awareness of pain imposed won’t happen if staff with disability don’t communicate the human reality of getting to, being at, and returning from the workplace to decision-makers and those they share their workplaces with.

We can’t expect that demands to change or improve a situation will be acceded to on purely rational grounds (abstract and impersonal). We all prioritise how we feel and act on emotional terms. We will usually respond with empathy and compassion when those attributes are activated – and that can’t happen unless we become aware of the true dimension of lived experience of disability (or any other generator of exclusion and inequity).

ERGs have extraordinary potential as situational and role-based leaders to activate and transmit our natural senses of empathy and compassion. This is a natural leadership function. It not about doing what an organisation’s leadership is failing to do but what an ERG’s natural role is. In the evolution of any culture, we cannot focus on perceived failures and assign blame. We must focus on the potential to change through positive action. 

ERGs have a natural leadership role of bringing awareness of the authentic human reality of their membership’s workplace experience to decision-makers and peers. Activation of our capacity for empathy and compassion is the first step. The next is guiding their response toward effective action. That’s also another story.